UCS C240 M5 Onboard NIC issues after update

[cgi]

Hi everyone,

I am having some issues, we have 3 UCS C240 M5 nodes, that have previously been running using the Hyperflex platform and FI.

Now we are trying to repurpose them to run another site for us, my superiors made the decision that we will run them in Standalone mode forsaking all the Hyperconverged functionality.

I factory reset the servers, installed ESXi 8.0.2U on the servers, set everything up to run them in standalone, no issues so far. Then I checked the CIMC and saw the FW/BIOS was out of date, so I ofc wanted to update to the newest version, and I downloaded the HUU suggested release version 4.3(2.230270) from the Cisco download page. After this everything worked as it should, no errors arose doing the upgrade, however I could no longer contact the nodes on the ESXi management IP.
I then went into the ESXi on the server using the vKVM as I could still reach the CIMC IP, and I checked the network settings, and I saw that the NICs that I used, which are the onboard NICs the Intel X550, were now gone from ESXi. Since then I have tried the following to get it to work

• Rollback to previous FW/BIOS using the CIMC GUI
• Install the newest driver in ESXi as I thought maybe the FW on the NIC was updated and our driver in VMware was out of date
• Install another OS (Windows Server 2019) and manually install the driver, but the Device Manager didn't even recognize the hardware it looks like.

None of this has helped my situation, so now I am turning to you guys, if you need any additional info I will be happy to provide it.

Thanks in advance!

Best Regards Christian

[Kirk J · Accepted solution]

Greetings.

Go through the CIMC's BIOS related settings and make sure the LOM ports are not disabled some how.

Normally a firmware upgrade isn't going to adjust those kinds of settings, but you should probably check (there will be both LOM port option-rom enable/disable as well as overall port enable/disable.

Any reason why you are using the onboard LOM ports instead of the VIC/MLOM 10/25Gb these would have shipped with?

Kirk...

[cgi]

Hi Kirk,

Thank you so much, I had been looking through the BIOS settings, but it seems I have overlooked this setting, I just went and checked on one of the nodes, and could see that it indeed was set to disable. After enabling it, it's back to working as intended!

We are exclusively using it for management while setting up, and are planning to use the VIC ports, but it was still a major headache for me. Once again thank you so much for the swift response! Have a great day